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Second Nature

As the gap between what was and what is continues to widen in the landscape, so does our desire to preserve and interact with nature. I am fascinated by the ways we are driven to capture and make meaningful our engagement with the natural world. This photographic series brings the exterior world inward, negotiating the displays of natural history museums, wildlife areas, zoos, and even our local outdoor sport stores from an assortment of locations across the US. Upon consideration, the presentation of these constructed environments reveal more about our own ideals and beliefs that it does about nature. Disclosed in these scenes of suspended animation are notions of the picturesque, stories of our fears, longings and admirations, and traditions of collection, hunting and decoration. Facing inward to our past, they speak to the human desire to bring the outside world in, to captured nature, and to contain it. Yet by entering these constructed environments, our longing for nature can never truly be satisfied. Instead we are confronted with relics, phantoms and idealizations creating an awkwardness, tension, and discomfort, and commenting on the way we perceive the natural world and how we interpret our relationship to it.